Lawyer: Airport land probe long overdue

Friday, Feb. 4, 2005 | 11:15 a.m.

A lawyer who has been a longtime critic of Clark County's land transactions had asked federal officials in 2002 to probe some of the same issues that are at the center of an audit of airport land deals launched last week.

Attorney Laura FitzSimmons alleges that the county aviation department has long shortchanged local taxpayers and the federal Bureau of Land Management through land sales, exchanges or leases that gave huge benefits to a small group of local developers. Similar allegations spurred the current county audit, in which Metro Police and a BLM inspector general are also participating.

The BLM has an interest in the matter because it turned over federal land to the county to create the 5,300 Cooperative Management Area, or CMA, and still receives most of the revenue from sales of the land. That acreage abutting the airport was set aside and put under the airport's oversight to avoid building conflicts with the airport and its air traffic.

FitzSimmons wrote to the BLM in 2002 complaining that a land deal considered by the Clark County Commission would unfairly benefit land broker Scott Gragson -- the grandson of a Las Vegas former mayor who is also at the center of a more recent land deal that sparked the ongoing audit.

The deal she criticized in 2002 also involved former Clark County Commissioner Jay Bingham and Cam Walker, son-in-law of the late Bob Broadbent and an executive with the monorail company. Broadbent was the former director of McCarran International Airport. Broadbent's successor and protege in that position, Randy Walker, has been in charge of the airport and overseer of its land deals since 1997.

FitzSimmons said the ongoing row over the handling of the Cooperative Management Area is just the latest example of what she has spoken against on numerous occasions.

Randy Walker countered that FitzSimmons, who is representing a client in a $6.5 million court decision against the airport in a case due to go to the Nevada Supreme Court later this month, is not looking at the issues objectively.

In the case of the deal FitzSimmons criticized in January 2002, county commissioners approved a land lease with one group of developers instead of accepting another developer's cash offer of $1.5 million, which FitzSimmons said was 20 percent more than the appraised value of the land.

Walker said at the time the leases promised more long-term income for the county, and FitzSimmons' complaints failed to overturn the decision.

FitzSimmons said that doesn't change her opinion that she gave in 2002; that the deal was part of "of a persistent pattern of exchanging CMA land to political insiders for values which shortchange the intended recipients of CMA funds, primarily the BLM."

Under the terms of the 1998 law which turned over management of BLM land to the county, 85 percent of the receipts from land sales of the land in the Cooperative Management Area go to the BLM. Leases, however, provide income to the county.

FitzSimmons, who was on "Face to Face With Jon Ralston" on Cox cable channel 19 on Thursday, said the fundamental premise behind the airport's management of the Cooperative Management Area is flawed because there is no need to shield the airport from complaints about aircraft operations.

Developers already have to waive their right to complain about aircraft noise when they build anywhere in Clark County, she said.

Walker said that misses the point.

"The primary purpose of the CMA land is to assure that land is developed in accord with the nature of the airport," he said. "We have a $4 (billion) to $5 billion asset here which is the lifeblood of the community. We want to make sure we don't have the same problems that other airports have."

He doesn't disagree that the airport has some legal protection against noise-related complaints, but that doesn't mean that those complaints won't come and won't impact airport operations.

"That's a legal point. but what happens if you have tens of thousands of people who don't want the airport to expand? It's not a legal issue. It's a political issue. ... We're trying to avoid the same community issues that have affected other major airports across the country."

FitzSimmons, though, said the net result of county policies has been to amass a huge amount of land under the airport's, and Walker's, control.

She compared Walker to William Mulholland, the engineer who helped build modern Southern California with huge water projects and inspired a character in the movie "Chinatown."

"There is a very serious case that Walker, by giving him power over this land, was the Mulholland of Southern Nevada. ... These are massive transactions."

FitzSimmons has been particularly critical of the county aviation department's use of a small group of appraisers, who she says skew results to favor a pool of insider developers and brokers, and shortchanged landowners who sell to local governments.

On Thursday, she declined to discuss specific earlier cases involving airport land deals. But the controversy of the local land exchange in which the airport in 2003 offered for sale land that, according to a newspaper advertisement, could only be used as a cemetery, but which never included such a deed restriction, confirms her suspicions, FitzSimmons said.

"It took this, which was so egregious, with affected neighbors coming in, it took this to wake everybody up," she said. "The development people, people in real estate, have seen this for years. There has been a lot of disgust."

About half of the 38 acres at Windmill Road and Durango Drive were subsequently zoned for commercial uses last month. Scott Gragson, who has denied improper collusion on the deal, made a $5 million profit in the land.

The case has prompted an audit requested by Commissioner Lynette Boggs McDonald and ordered by county management into aviation department land disposal practices. Metro Police and the federal Bureau of Land Management, which receives most revenue from land sales within the Cooperative Management Area, have said they will also be involved in the probe.

In another response, County Manager Thom Reilly has ordered a halt to land exchanges and said he favors doing away with swaps, such as the one that benefited Gragson.

Walker said Thursday that FitzSimmons may be a good lawyer, but she has ulterior motives for criticizing the county and the aviation department.

"Probably she's not a real objective person in issues dealing with the airport," he said.

FitzSimmons has battled the county, the aviation department and county-related agencies for years. She represents university system Board of Regents member Steve Sisolak in a lawsuit over land values affected by airport height restrictions. The county is taking a lower court decision giving Sisolak $6.5 million to the Supreme Court in an appeal later this month.

FitzSimmons also has been critical of noise from helicopters coming from the airport, represented home owners who fought the construction of the Las Vegas Monorail, and criticized the "grandeur" of the Regional Transportation Commission building next door to the Clark County Government Center.

The one element tying all of the issues together is the presence of transportation professionals -- and a few elected officials -- who have worked or work now for McCarran International Airport.

FitzSimmons has also fought other local governments, particularly the city of Las Vegas, on various eminent domain issues.

She said she's not the only one who has long believed the airport land deals have been improper, however.

"A lot of people have had concerns over the years," FitzSimmons said. "Over the last four years, I've gotten maybe six calls from developers or others that felt this was certain people feathering their own nest. ... Certain people have the inside scoop and the inside advantage."

Walker denied shuttling land or business to an insiders' clique, one of the core allegations from FitzSimmons and other critics. The same goes for his staff, he said.

"It better not have happened," he said.

Walker said the county has benefited from a set of policies that have encouraged development that has been compatible with the airport.

While some of those commenting on the latest furor have said an issue is that the county or federal government could have received more money from the deals, Walker said that the goal has never been to make money for the federal taxpayers.

"We actually have a policy of how these things are supposed to be done," he said. "It was developed by the board (of county commissioners) in 2000. Everything was balanced against those goals and objectives.

"As far as Scott Gragson being an insider, I've been at some level in local government for 20 years. I never knew who Scott Gragson was until two, three years ago."

Walker said he doesn't personally know most of the other developers that have been involved in airport related land deals. Appraisals have come from a group of seven who are certified, professional and independent, he said.

"They are pretty well-known appraisers. ... They are all certified appraisers. They all have the standards they have to abide by."

FitzSimmons charges, however, closely mirror some of those that have come from other local observers. John Hiatt, former chairman and still member of the Enterprise Town Advisory Board, which recommends land-use decisions to the Clark County Commission, and Sue Allen, president of the neighborhood activist group South West Action Network, have both said the county's land disposal practices in the southwest Las Vegas Valley have sparked concern for years.

Tony Cox, one of several residents who raised objections about the county's role in the 38-acre deal at Windmill and Durango, said he and many of his neighbors have shared those concerns.

"Many people for many years have had a suspicion that something was not quite right, but have never been able to put their finger on it," Cox, owner of a software development company, said. "What we've found here, however, is very straightforward."

He doesn't assume that the deal is evidence of deliberate wrongdoing, but doesn't give much room for the airport's mistakes.

"It could conceivably be incompetence, but it has to be incompetence or fraud, that's the problem."

Cox said his concern is that the county lost money when other potential developers when the aviation department said in the original ad that the land could only be used for a cemetery.

"I have no axe to grind here, except that I don't want to see public money frittered away," he said.

One conclusion that critics such as FitzSimmons, Cox and others share with officials such as County Manager Reilly: complex land swaps are probably finished in favor of straightforward auctions.

That would eliminate even the appearance of insider dealing, the critics contend.

"The solution is through public auction," FitzSimmons said. "That will get the highest return."

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